Friday, June 5, 2009

Leaders & Enders

Yay!!! my sewing machine is home again. they did a really nice job of cleaning & tuning it (for quite a price too, i might add) and now it's so quiet that i keep checking to make sure there's bobbin thread (when the machine is sewing without bobbin thread, it makes a different, quieter sound).

the pix above is my Momo Wonderland project. i'll blog more about it later but i'm using it as a "leaders & enders" project. i first learned about this on Bonnie's blog and it was one of those "ah-ha/duh" moments when the concept is so obvious, you wonder why you never thought of it in the first place.

basically, what it is, is when you start and stop machine-sewing, you usually have long tails of thread hanging. to save thread, and also because it's less messy and easy to start, i have a piece of fabric to "lead" and "end" with. in the past, i've used scraps of fabrics to sew on and then end up tossing them. i learned about that trick from Simply Quilts. then Bonnie comes along, and says you can create a whole separate quilt top, using small patches from another project as your leaders and enders. yikes--i don't know if this makes any sense at all. well, just go over here and read Bonnie's much clearer explanation. (btw, i'm referencing Bonnie like she's an old friend--we don't know each other at all but i enjoy reading her blog :-)